Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Representative to Russia Keng Chung-yung, left, thanks Japan Airlines Russian branch general manager Takeshi Kodama, second left, at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow yesterday for flying a group of Taiwanese to Tokyo on a charter flight.
Photo courtesy of the Representative Office in Moscow

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday thanked Japan for allowing 94 Taiwanese on a chartered plane evacuating others stranded in Russia, where COVID-19 cases are rising and many international flights have been canceled.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. In that war’s aftermath, novelist George Orwell produced two prophetic works. The first, Animal Farm, was published in August 1945; the second, Nineteen Eighty-Four, came out in June 1949.

Both still ring true and cover a wide range of messages, including even how the mid-sized nation of Taiwan achieved its democracy and why it still maintains an outlier status in a COVID-19 world.